After we leave the break room. We walk to Daisy's office. And we sit down, "So right now you are an assistant librarian so most of your only real duties are to reshelve books and help older librarians in their work, although most won't need it, it's mostly to teach you what we do and get you familiar with the library."

"Here's your schedule you start at seven in the morning your half-hour lunch break is at noon and you finish up at three in the afternoon and after that you can just do whatever you want many read in their rooms or the library, but you can also just leave and do anything else" she gives a badge with the symbol of the library on it along with my name and job.

"This is your badge it marks you as a librarian so don't lose it there's also a sticking enchantment on it so just put it on your chest it'll gain enough magic to stick form the environment so just make sure its stuck and you'll be fine also don't forget to take it off after your shift don't want anypony to try asking you for help" I nod before sticking it to my chest.

She also gives me a small paper map "And finally here's your map", she leaves the office and I follow after her a few moments later. We move through a few doors to the back of the library before reaching a room filled with sacks of books on tables with ponies filling several carts. "So your main two jobs will be pretty simple you'll be sorting books to fill the carts or pushing the full carts out and putting the books back on the shelves for today you'll be doing the second."

As we approach a cart she continues "The carts are already sorted so you just have to take them where they need to go each book has a small round symbol" She holds up a book showing a small round symbol made of silver showing a pickaxe on it "each symbol goes to a different section the ordering being right to left is A to Z ascending so bottom right is A and top left is Z, got it?"

"Ya don't sound that hard, so I'll be moving the carts today?"

She nods "Yup everypony knows your new so just take it slow and get used to the library and I'll see you at lunch in the meantime I'll be in my office if you need me ok?"

"Ok see you at lunch."

After she leaves, I pick a cart and start pushing towards its designation, deciding to simply push with my TK field instead of my hooves as I make my way through the library over the next five hours of moving the cart. The process not being too hard with the strength and range of my TK and healthy body.

After a few hours and finishing my third cart I went back to the sorting room only to see it mostly empty. Glancing at the clock on the wall I see its twelve oh five lunchtime. I leave and after a short walk enter the breakroom before grabbing some food and sitting down next to Blaz and Daisy already talking.

"So Shade, how's your first day going?" Blaz asks.

"Not bad I've emptied a few carts but that's about it, nothing to really mention" he nods as I take a bite of some steamed carrots "Although I do have some questions if you don't mind?" I ask them.

"Sure, what do you need?" Blaz asks back.

"Well first I normally do a morning run but I'm thinking I'll probably do them after work now, know any good places?"

Blaz nods with a smile "Good most ponies don't, but you don't need to switch if you want the best place would probably be the park, it's only around two blocks away and has plenty of space so you can get there in a few minutes just leave the library, go left down the road and continue for a while."

"Thanks good to know, my next question is more for Daisy" she turns from her food to me "Do you know any spells to tell the time I didn't even know it was lunch until I saw the clock in the sorting room."

"Sure no problem I know one, it's pretty simple I can find the book for you later."

"That would be great thank you" she nods.

"No problem." After some more chatting we finish eating and get back to work and after three more hours I'm done for the day. After checking in with Daisy and getting my first day's pay I grab my saddlebags and head out to the city.

As I walk along the street I pass through the upper city market district, mostly shops and restaurants, and I descend into the lower parts of the city as I approach the market. The markets here being mostly stalls along with several restaurants, some bakeries, and many other shops.

While growing up in the orphanage I'd visit these markets a few times mostly to help with shopping and to teach me some bartering skills. As I pass through the market, I spot many things that catch my interest but pass them. I'm here for something specific that I've seen in the past.

I turn to go down a side street, this street still has traffic just much less as this street has mostly batponies and a few griffins. This particular street sells meat, mostly fish, and a few other types. As I walk down the street I stop at a stall selling several types of fish meat.

After looking for a few moments I see what is labeled as bass. I see the stall owner, a batpony, passing some fish to another batpony after they're done I call out to him "Hey how much for the bass?" He turns to me and looks a bit surprised and after a moment speaks.

"Sorry didn't mean to be rude, just not often you see a non-batpony in the meat market, especially an earth pony."

"And as for the bass it's ten bits a pound" I turn to see the fish, it's good quality, and ten bits a pound is a decent price.

"Sure, I'll take a pound," I say before grabbing my bits and paying him after he wraps my fish in some paper. And puts it in a small paper bag before passing it to me "Thanks have a good day."

"You too," he says back.

After that I also bought a small bag of flour, a few potatoes, some salt, oil, and sugar, a few plates, some small glasses, forks and spoons, and a pan and pot. Along with a wooden spoon and a decent knife. Before heading back to the library. As I enter one of the staff-only back door, and head to my room after closing my door. I take out my goods and new dishes and get them put away.

Feeling hungry I start by preheating a pan on the stove. The heat comes from an enchanted small flat metal ring controlled by a small metal dial on the front. I start cutting the piece of fish into small strips before oiling my pan and laying the fish into it to cook while I dice two potatoes before adding them to the pan.

After I flip the fish, I hear a knock at my door before shouting "The doors open come in." After a second or so I hear my door open and close.

"What are you cooking?" I turn to see Daisy standing there with a book looking curious.

"Fish and potatoes, why?" I ask back. And hearing my answer, she looks somewhat shocked.

"You eat meat?" I nod.

"Ya not often but sometimes."

"You're just full of surprises aren't you? Well I brought you the book I mentioned." I turn off the burner and plate my food before turning to her. I grab the book "It's mostly just simple spells for things like housework and convenience."

"Thanks for this I'm sure it will be a big help." I float the book over to my desk before looking back at her I see her eyeing my meal "Would you like to try some? I made more than I need."

After hearing my offer, she pauses for a moment before giving a hesitant nod "Y-ya sure I'd like that" seeing her hesitation.

"Are you sure? You don't have to if you don't want any."

"No I do kind of want to try, my grandsire was a batpony he used to offer me some, it's just been years since then."

"Well grab a plate" After we sit down to eat, she tries a piece of the fish.

"Oh WOW, this is good" see her take several bites of the fish in fast order.

"Slow down you don't want to choke," I say with a grin as she does so looking a little embarrassed, we sit in silence after that and finish our meal.

As I collect our plates I put them in the sink. "I'm glad you enjoyed it" she walks to my door.

"Yup thanks again and have a goodnight Shade."

"Same to you," I say as she closes my door. I start to clean up and after I'm done I start reading the book Daisy brought me.

The book mostly contained a list of spells with small descriptions of them and their effects. The one I decided to try first was named temporis. A simple spell to tell the time nothing complex but still very useful. And after spending some time memorizing the matrix I cast it a few times.

It took me a few tries to get it right but after I did it wasn't that hard to get down. After that I started to look through the book for any other spells. I might want to learn a few that caught my eye. Ones like a basic spell to make things lighter and one for freezing something but after a while I put the book down and picked up one of the ones I got yesterday.

This being the one about runes. This chapter in particular is about types of magic. This being new to me as I previously thought that all magic was the same but in hindsight that doesn't make much sense as beings like Discord definitely have some other type of magic, and same with Sombra probably.

The difference being their magic element. Many different magic elements exist, one for any emotion and type of force in nature such as air, fire, and water. The main effect of using different types of magic elements being one of a supplement to normal magic.

A good way to view this is that most spells use neutral magic also called natural magic the main reason you would use an element instead is that depending on the spell the power and effect can be boosted and enhanced. All beings are born with one or several elemental affinities so if somepony with a fire affinity were to learn how to convert their natural magic into fire magic and use it to power the candle flame spell or any flame spell it would be enhanced.

You can also use the converted magic in a raw form as unlike natural magic it already has an effect and as you're the source of the magic it has some form of connection to you. And although it's not very efficient. Costing much more natural magic you can also use an elemental type of magic to control it directly without the use of a matrix.

The main advantage being the ability to quickly use your magic. The downside being that when you convert your magic to an element while you have little to no practice sometimes you'll lose more than half the magic in the process. The main benefit is that unlike spells where you only have a limited amount of control over them with an element you can use it for anything that you like.

For instance you can use a fire affinity to enhance a fire-based spell or you can control it directly and start moving around fire at will. You may be wondering why doesn't everypony use their affinity? Well two reason,, one most don't train even their natural magic and so don't have enough excess magic to convert into elemental magic without draining yourself and the second reason has to do with finding out your affinity and unlocking it.

After looking through the book I found out how one can learn their affinity and unlock it. All you need to do is to use a spell the book even has the spell. But the problem is not the spell's complexity but its power cost being higher than three or four adult unicorns' worth of magic so there are only three good options.

One can gather several unicorns to power a runic matrix. Option two, find a pony with enough magic to do it themselves. And finally get a crystal and enchant it to hold a magic reserve and use it as a buffer to power the spell. Out of all the options available to me the last one is the best as getting several ponies together or getting a pony with enough power would cost a lot and that's even if you can find anypony willing.

So my best bet is buying a gem and enchanting it and surprisingly that's not as hard as it seems. Gems, even the bigger ones, aren't that expensive as crystals seem much more common here than on Earth. Charging it would only really take a week or two. The hardest part being finding a spell for the magic reserve. But I do work in the second-largest library in Equestria so finding one should be only a matter of time.

And as for the gem when I walked through the markets today. I saw several gems that would work just fine. I don't remember their exact price. But I don't think it's much more than I'd make in a month so I'm going to only be buying some small things for the next few weeks as the sooner I know my affinity the sooner I can start practicing with them.

After making several notes in a journal I keep it in English so no pony can read it. I take a shower before draining my magic through a fire candle spell. My new method for doing so as I used the heating spell in the past. But I've decided to use this one instead as the more magic you use for it the bigger the flame gets but it also takes more to maintain making it very useful and for burning through a large amount of magic quickly.

After only a minute or so I'm drained. Only leaving enough that I don't pass out. I drag my tired body to my bed, falling asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow.

Author's Note

[as always thank you for reading]